MERIP - Middle East Research and Information Project

MERIP OP-EDS

Western Sahara Poser for UN
Reuters (Africa Blog)
April 28, 2009
Jacob Mundy

Morocco serves as the backdrop for such Hollywood blockbusters as Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and Body of Lies. The country’s breathtaking landscapes and gritty urban neighbourhoods are the perfect setting for Hollywood’s imagination.

Unbeknown to most filmgoers, however, is that Morocco is embroiled in one of Africa’s oldest conflicts - the dispute over Western Sahara. This month the UN Security Council is expected to take up the dispute once more, providing US President Barack Obama with an opportunity to assert genuine leadership in resolving this conflict. But there’s no sign that the new administration is paying adequate attention. Full Story>>

Letters, He Gets Letters
Bitter Lemons International
March 26, 2009
Chris Toensing

Shortly before assuming office, President Barack Obama was handed a missive signed by such Washington luminaries as ex-national security advisers Zbigniew Brezezinski and Brent Scowcroft, urging him to “explore the possibility” of direct contact with Hamas. One month after he entered the White House, Obama received an epistle from Ahmad Yousef, a Gaza-based spokesman for the Islamist movement, making the same recommendation. “There can be no peace without Hamas,” Yousef told the New York Times when asked about the letter's contents. “We congratulated Mr. Obama on his presidency and reminded him that he should live up to his promise to bring real change to the region.”

There is no word, as yet, on how the foreign policy doyens' message was received, but Yousef's occasioned a huffy US rebuke of the UN Relief Works Agency, whose top official in Gaza, Karen Abu Zayd, passed the letter to Sen. John Kerry while he was visiting the devastated territory in mid-February. Even a single sealed envelope, it seems, creates the appearance that the Obama administration is breaking with the US vow, enunciated first under President George W. Bush, not to speak with Hamas until it agrees to renounce violence, abide by previous Palestinian agreements with Israel and recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Full Story>>

Elections Are Key to Darfur Crisis
The Montreal Gazette
March 7, 2009
Khalid Medani

It has been quite a week. For the first time, the international community indicted a sitting president of a sovereign state. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan stands accused by the International Criminal Court in The Hague of "crimes against humanity and war crimes" committed in the course of the Khartoum regime's brutal suppression of the revolt in the country's far western province of Darfur. Having indicted two other figures associated with the regime in 2007, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo began building a case against the man at the top, and on Wednesday, the court issued a warrant for Bashir's arrest. Full Story>>

Out of the Rubble
The National
January 23, 2009
Mouin Rabbani

Speaking to his people on January 18, hours after Hamas responded to Israel’s unilateral suspension of hostilities with a conditional ceasefire of its own, the deposed Palestinian Authority prime minister Ismail Haniyeh devoted several passages of his prepared text to the subject of Palestinian national reconciliation. For perhaps the first time since Hamas’s June 2007 seizure of power in the Gaza Strip, an Islamist leader broached the topic of healing the Palestinian divide without mentioning Mahmoud Abbas by name.

At a press conference the following day convened by Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson of the Martyr Izz al Din al Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing, the movement went one step further. “The Resistance”, Abu Ubaida intoned, “is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”. Full Story>>

The Horrors of Israel's Peace
Al Ahram Weekly
January 22-28, 2009
Samera Esmeir

Three weeks after the war on Gaza, Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire but refused to terminate its so-called defensive operations. In response, Hamas declared a ceasefire for one week, until the withdrawal of Israeli troops has been completed. For many in the West, the ceasefire might seem like an occasion to celebrate, for the cessation of military hostilities on both sides will perhaps renew the peace process. But there are reasons to be critical of this ceasefire, since it continues the situation in which Israel acts unilaterally. What we are actually witnessing is a new phase of the catastrophe in Gaza. While the characteristics of this phase are not yet known, Israel's violence has become ever more evident. And perhaps this is why Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not mention the word "peace" once in the speech he gave to announce the ceasefire. The "peace process" might soon be revealed as the other side of the coin to war -- its continuation by other means -- that simultaneously feeds it. Full Story>>

A Battleground for the Foreseeable Future
Bitter Lemons International
September 11, 2008
Chris Toensing

Bob Woodward’s four books chronicling the wars of President George W. Bush are sensitive barometers of conventional wisdom in Washington. Whereas the first volume, published in 2002 at the height of the self-righteous nationalism gripping the capital after the September 11, 2001 attacks, hailed Bush’s self-confidence in acting to protect the homeland, the 2008 installment depicts the same man as cocksure and incurious. This much is not news. More educational are Woodward’s hints about the worldviews that will outlast this unpopular administration, embedded in the organs of the national security state. Full Story>>

Egypt Stifles Debate in the United States
Northwest Arkansas Times
August 27, 2008
Bayann Hamid

The Egyptian regime has once again succeeded in stifling freedom of speech, this time not in Egypt, but in the US. Earlier this month, an Egyptian court convicted a prominent Egyptian-American activist for his outspoken criticism of the regime’s poor human rights record in American public fora. The court accused Saad Eddin Ibrahim, of "tarnishing Egypt's image" abroad. The conviction referred primarily to writings he published in the foreign press; most notably among them an August 2007 op-ed in the Washington Post in which he criticized Egypt's human rights record and questioned the reasons behind US aid to Egypt. Full Story>>

Want to Fight Terrorism? Think Globally, Act Locally
Globe and Mail (Toronto),
August 4, 2008
Khalid Mustafa Medani

Militant Islam is under global scrutiny for clues to conditions that foster its rise, and to strategies for reversing that growth. But the key is not in Islamic doctrine, US foreign policy or formal ties to various nations, as many analysts have asserted. It lies at the community level, with clan and local leaders. Full Story>>

Iraq’s Kurds Have to Choose
Globe and Mail (Toronto)
July 30, 2008
Joost Hiltermann

Kurdish parties have become kingmakers in Baghdad , and they know it. As no federal government can work without them, they are pulling every available political lever to expand the territory and resources they control, trying to build the foundation of an independent Kurdish state. But even more than territory, they need security. If everyone acts quickly and wisely, that understanding could help resolve one of the Iraq war’s thorniest issues. Full Story>>

Exiting Iraq Is Easier Than They Say
The Nation (web-only)
July 16, 2008
Chris Toensing

The debate over the war in Iraq follows a yellowing script: The minute someone suggests that the US move to withdraw its troops, war supporters cry “Havoc!” True to form, when no less a figure than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated he wants a timeline for a US pullout, John McCain summoned the specter of dire consequences. “I’ve always said we’ll come home with honor and with victory and not through a set timetable,” McCain said. In his major foreign policy speech on July 15, Barack Obama affirmed his support for a withdrawal timetable, adding that the US must “get out as carefully as we were careless getting in.” Obama’s position is the correct one, but he, like many other war critics, has done too little to counter the refrain that withdrawal is simply “cutting and running,” a recipe for disaster. Full Story>>